March 5, 2012. The staff of the San Diego nonprofit Invisible Children had been working around the clock for the past several months. Now, the exhausted and exhilarated crew gathered round Director of Communications Noelle West’s desk as she typed “YouTube” into her browser and pressed “make public” on the 29-minute-long video that, according to the video’s narrator, would “change the course of human history forever.” At midday Pacific time, Kony 2012 went live. A beat. A sigh. The view count hardly budged. Everyone returned to their seats. 

That night, Jason Russell, the video’s protagonist and Invisible Children’s then-33-year-old co-founder, was in Los Angeles alongside his wife, Danica, and 5-year-old son (and Kony 2012 co-star), Gavin, leveraging the modest Hollywood connections he’d made to drum up excitement around the video. He premiered Kony 2012 at the talent firm Creative Artists Agency, with an event hosted by Jason Bateman and family friend Kristen Bell. Around 200 people were in attendance. After the screening finished, Jason checked his phone. Things were going well so far. With help from a nationwide network of high school students the Invisible Children team had spent months cultivating, the video had climbed to 200,000 views. By midnight, it had reached 500,000, which was their goal for the entire year. 

Then, Jason awoke in the middle of the night to a flurry of texts, all saying some variety of the same thing: 

“Jason, Oprah has tweeted the video.”

One tweet from the Queen of All Media set the video on a stratospheric trajectory. Jason began receiving messages from late-night TV hosts requesting to interview him, and from celebrities like Justin Timberlake who wanted to show their support. It was a tsunami of accolades and Jason was quickly overwhelmed. To this day, many of those messages remain unopened.

The next morning, Jason drove from Los Angeles to Invisible Children’s office where dozens of strangers were milling about, filling the parking garages on either side of the fifth-story office, all wanting to meet Jason and his team — either to help out or to pitch business ideas of their own. 

When Jason entered the conference room in front of the main office space, not a single head turned to face him. Siloed in their cubicles, each member of staff was incessantly pressing refresh on YouTube, gazing at their screens in a trance as the view count climbed by the millions: 

Two million. Refresh. Three million. Refresh. Four million. It didn’t stop.

Kim Kardashian was tweeting about it, Rihanna was tweeting about it. Justin Bieber was tweeting about it. Then, the office’s internet crashed.

“Can anyone help me?” Jason asked. No one even looked up. 

Jason grabbed Alex Collins, the artist relations manager, by the arm. “Help me,” he said. 

“Can’t. Working,” Alex replied before returning to his seat. 

Jason left the office and returned 15 minutes later with a wheelbarrow filled with bottles of Champagne, pushing it into the conference room. No one noticed. “Everyone in here!” he yelled. No one budged. They were glued to their computers, trying frantically to keep up with the video’s wild spread. “We are so fucking busy,” Jason heard someone say, while alone in the conference room with his wheelbarrow. 

The entire world felt open to him. Because of him, a new generation of internet-raised digital natives would know revolution, true community, peace. Because of him, the most wanted international warlord would be brought to justice. Because of him, evil would be destroyed, and love and goodness would forever prevail. 

All this, and not a single member of his staff would give him a simple gesture of acknowledgement. 

Jason left the conference room and banged on a table: “We. Are. Celebrating.”

Finally, the staff obeyed their leader — for a few moments. For 15 minutes, they popped Champagne and spiritlessly celebrated. “That was the only time we had any kind of celebration,” Jason says. 

That video — Kony 2012 — is an artifact of unprecedented viral success, reaching 100 million views in only six short days. At the time, it was the most viral video in YouTube history. And it is difficult to overstate how unlikely it was for this particular video to take that crown. YouTube had already proven the ability to reach Super Bowl-size audiences via web video, but the other most viral videos of that year were all either catchy pop hits like Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe,” cultural sensations like Psy’s “Gangnam Style” or political sendups such as “Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney. Epic Rap Battles of History.” 

Kony 2012, effectively a social advocacy video, was a viral anomaly. The campaign centered around Joseph Kony, leader of Ugandan guerilla group the Lord’s Resistance Army and, according to the video, the most evil man you’d never heard of. The viewer was directly challenged: Keep watching for the next 29 minutes, make Kony famous, change the world. It proposed an irresistibly simple and slick call to action, gamifying a pre-organized strategy: Share the video with friends; tweet it to celebrities and government officials; take to the streets. If all goes to plan, a groundswell of grassroots activism will compel the U.S. government to intervene, sending out troops to capture Kony.

The Arab Spring — a pro-democracy uprising across several countries, triggered by viral footage of a young Tunisian man who set himself ablaze — had recently fueled a narrative about the democratic power of social media. Arriving in its wake, Kony 2012 spoke the language of techno-optimism. It was a time when there was an ambient faith that digital democracy practices and social networking technologies could inspire mass mobilization against centralized, oppressive hierarchies. The internet could inspire a global manhunt. Viewers could help catch the real-life villain, defeat the evil. All you had to do was share the video.

In the days that followed Kony 2012’s release, millions of Westerners previously numbed to charity footage of suffering Africans were suddenly inspired to take action, not only sharing the video, but also purchasing $30 kits filled with posters of Kony that they intended to spread around the streets. 

Then, just as quickly, it all fell apart.